A Safer State of Unconsciousness
by luvmeanddespair
Summary: The consequences of the Department of Mysteries battle, as seen through the eyes of Hermione Granger. Near death experiences, implied HermioneRon, and some mild fainting


This one came second in the 'Hermione gets injured in battle' topic on CoS. Rather than make up a battle of my own, I thought, why not just take her perspective in a previous one? Implied Ron/Hermione feelings, near death experience, and some mild fainting, too ;)

Obviously, all characters belong to JK Rowling, along with the basic premise, and the original topic idea was, I believe, put forward by meesha1971.

Enjoy, and review. Thanks.

luvmeanddespair

* * *

She knew this was a bad idea. Right from the start of it all. From beyond the start of it, actually …

Because who in their right mind would walk straight into someone's office and stick their head into the fireplace in there, without express permission, much less when person whose office it is is doing everything they can to get you banned in disgrace from the wizarding world, let alone expelled from Hogwarts?

Harry Potter, that's who. Her best friend, and, it sometimes felt like, seemingly an attempt on her worst enemy.

Not only did he include her in his hair-brained, half-baked scheme for instant expulsion, he'd left it to her to get them, as well as the other four students he'd rigged into this ridiculousness, out of trouble, left it to her to try and explain away all the suspicious events surrounding them – _and_ then had the cheek to criticise her when nothing had turned out the way he'd wanted! She supposed it was lucky it hadn't turned into an all-out brawl, thanks to Ron and the rest of them turning up with the wands …

_I've been floating around here doing nothing, and I've only just thought of Ron?_

She did indeed seem to be floating, though it was more like being gently pushed along by the tide than anything.

Hermione Granger had long since resigned herself to the fact that she was dying. How she knew that she was dying, and not dead, was beyond her, apart from the slight tug back towards her body she felt every time her physical being took another short, shallow breath.

Time obviously went faster in this –_what was this? It's just blackness_ – portal, other world, different dimension, opposite plane. Because here she seemed to have spent hours weeping over her imminent death, whilst _down there_ they only seemed to have moved a few paces. Here she was finally beginning to appreciate the idea of her death, yet below her they seemed to only just have realised that she was still alive. Just.

She had never been much of a church-goer before Hogwarts, before her other life, her _true_ life, but she had always been a bit of a fence-sitter when it came to principles like heaven and hell. She wondered where the glowing staircases and pearly gates were. Maybe witches really didn't get to go to heaven. Maybe she was going to be burned at the stake in hell. Then she realised that this might be her 'afterlife', floating in nothing, watching the lives of those she'd left behind for all eternity.

It sounded very boring. No books to read, no spells to practise. She hoped someone might think up with a counter for the curse she'd been hit with.

Then she realised that the only one at all likely to come up with a counter-curse was floating in a nether-world, with her physical self knocked unconscious and slowly dying.

_Funny little world, isn't it?_

And she didn't even know if she would have been able to come up with one herself, had it been someone else. She'd never seen that spell before. Slashing at someone's chest, like a Muggle with a knife? So crude.

She looked around again. Darkness surrounded her, but when she looked down, it was like a curtain parting for her, and she could clearly see the scene below her in the Ministry of Magic.

What was this … this place? So strange, it was, yet it seemed to welcome her, as though she had just stepped home from a long, tiresome journey. And all she wanted to do was sleep in her bed, tucked away in a corner of her room, for such a very, very long time …

She actually yawned, which surprised her, as the last time she'd looked (not too long ago, considering the distinct lack of better things to do here) she had been barely more than a wisp of smoke in the general form of a human being's body. Wisps of smoke did not yawn, nor did they have the need to, did they? She assumed this was her soul, though she was not sure, After all, Dumbledore had always said that after Harry's first defeat of Voldemort, he'd been barely more than this form himself …

But now, looking down over herself, she seemed different. Before, she had had no visible features, no delicate intricacies such as fingers; her hands had been mere lumps of … whatever she was made of now. But now, there long streams from these pieces of cloud-smoke-stuff, long, thin, finger-shaped streams. And she could see the forming of a nose in front of her eyes.

What was this? Was she finally 'going on?' Was this strange pitch black merely a collection point after death, or a waiting post until your body finally stopped breathing?

Her hair was falling into her eyes again. Her sweet, bushy, annoyingly unmanageable hair. She'd missed it. Well, she hadn't, but she missed the feeling of having it. She wondered how hair would benefit her, wherever it was that she was going.

Fingernails! She could se fingernails! True, they were still as short, dirty and bitten as ever (a habit from childhood that she'd never quite been able to kick, and now probably wouldn't be able to), but the tiny detail of them made her feel happier than when they had been swirling nothings.

Forget the feeling of a slight tide pulling her around, now it felt like she was being hit by a tidal wave! The force of being pushed around, to wherever you went now, would have been enough to knock her off her feet, had she not been drifting in mid-air.

She couldn't see through the tear in the black anymore. She knew that she must have finally died, because she was not stuck in that nether-region anymore, but she was sad that she couldn't see her friends, or her now-lifeless body, just for closure. She hoped that she would be able to see when she got to wherever it was that she was going.

There was the feeling of being violently washed away, of squeezing and sucking, and then, finally, of nothing.

When she awoke, it was to whiteness. _Is this what heaven is like?_ she thought, thinking back to the childish primary school drawings of white fluffy clouds and gold thrones and crowns, with feathery-winged angels serenading her as she and her friends played. That had been her heaven back then. True friends. She realised that, despite everything else that was going on, back down on earth, she had a small slice of that heaven – she had friends. And though she felt sad at the thought of losing them, and of their loss of her, she couldn't hold back the apprehension and excitement of what might be laying in wait for her here …

She glanced around, feeling as though she were lying on a bed, and with a shock spotted a head of bright red hair.

'Ron?' she half-gasped, half-croaked, struggling to get up as her chest exploded in pain, and before she knew it, someone had come bustling over to her and all but thrown her back onto the bed.

'Lie _down_, Miss Granger, how many more times must I tell you? You'll cause even more damage to that chest if you're not careful. Attacked by Death Eaters at the Ministry of Magic? You're lucky you're not dead; and goodness knows why you felt you had to run off there in the first -'

Hermione felt as though she might faint. 'They … they got you, too, Madam Pomfrey?' she croaked again, wondering why her throat felt so sore and her chest so painful.

The Hogwarts Healer looked down on her with something like pity. 'If I didn't know better, I would have said you had been attacked by brain tentacles, rather than your friend Mr Weasley over there.' And she nodded over to the only other occupied bed I what looked a lot like the Hogwarts hospital wing (_but who should need a hospital in heaven?_). Hermione went cold at her words.

'He's … he's dead too?'

'I think you need some rest, Miss Granger,' Madam Pomfrey said in concern. 'You've had a massive shock, and a very dangerous injury. You were lucky you didn't die.'

'I … I thought I did …?'

Confused beyond all conscious thought, and in too much to care that nothing around her was making any sort of sense, Hermione fell back into her pillows and promptly fell into a safer state of unconsciousness.


End file.
